I know there are some issues with this piece right off the bat, the values being all over the place and the overall busyness of the scene. Can you guys help me with some pointers on other possible mistakes and areas of improvement?The piece is for the second round of the Thunderdome challange over on Sinix's discord.

Lots of action going on in this piece I experimented a bit with contrast to give more depth to the scene (playing with autocontrast and a luminosity filter mask).Also you've got lots of nice silhouettes and it's a shame they didn't pop out more. Same for the spots of light on the front character.What do you think?

Also you may want to have a thicker outline for the character at the front, but I didn't try.

bosinpai wrote:Hi,Lots of action going on in this piece I experimented a bit with contrast to give more depth to the scene (playing with autocontrast and a luminosity filter mask).Also you've got lots of nice silhouettes and it's a shame they didn't pop out more. Same for the spots of light on the front character.What do you think?Also you may want to have a thicker outline for the character at the front, but I didn't try.

Thanks a lot for taking the time and energy to look this over and fiddle around with it, it's really apreciated! I like the increased contrast, but I feel an issue with bumping up the vibrance of the background sky is that it makes the battlescene in the nearer background look further away somehow. The army/warband also almost seems to have a lighter value than the sky, which creates a strange kinda distorted depth, as the background sky pushes into the midground. What I do like however is the lightspeckles on the foreground character. The light looks more natural, and fits better together with the rest of the piece. I'm not sure I agree with the outline idea. I was going for a more painterly style, but I think you're right in that I need to go further in either direction. The painterly rendering clash with the still visible linework.

Yes, the sky came out accidentally and I liked the additional saturation - but it's way overboard.Wrt perspective, the front character feels a bit disconnected from the rest of the scene, this may be due to an accentuated foreshortening on the mid/background (not sure if you built a perspective grid, with the terrain slope that's getting difficult ^_^).

bosinpai wrote:Wrt perspective, the front character feels a bit disconnected from the rest of the scene, this may be due to an accentuated foreshortening on the mid/background (not sure if you built a perspective grid, with the terrain slope that's getting difficult ^_^).

I think you're right, and I got a similar critique from Sinix on stream. It does look out of place and disconnected. I think this is a matter of staging/posing and composition than an issue with perspective (I did not use a grid, but the perspective looks fine to me). I think the issue more than anything else is that he's just standing awkwardly by himself in a stiff pose that doesn't interract with anything/anyone else in the pose. This stands out as extra strange when multiple of the other characters in the background are actively interacting with one another.